Thursday, August 20, 2009

You Know You're Too Right Wing When the Right Wing Tell You You're Too Right Wing

The above video of Doug Christie defending British MP George Galloway, should give us pause. Mr. Christie is the leader of the Western Block Party, who support separation of the Western provinces, and was once kicked out of the Canadian Alliance Party because of what they determined to be his extremist views.

The other interesting thing about Mr. Christie, is that while it may be easy to dismiss his ideals as extremist, he comes across as very articulate, intelligent and reasonable. He has practiced law for several decades and earned a reputation for defending questionable clients, but in a democracy, everyone has a right to a fair trial, and everyone deserves to be heard.

I'm not from the West, so I can't really weigh in on their concerns, but as a Canadian take it very seriously when any group wants to leave us. So maybe instead of simply dismissing them we should listen, and if it means granting more autonomy to the provinces to handle things like the gun registry, then we should at least consider it.

If they hold a referendum that either overturns or endorses the need to have guns registered, it will be their decision, and they won't always see Ottawa (and Toronto and Quebec) as their enemy. Maybe that's simply the new federalism.

However, back to Jason Kenney and George Galloway. Below is a video of Mr. Galloway, whom I like very much. What is interesting in some of the footnotes, is that Jason Kenney himself has aligned himself with a group who are also on Canada's list as a Terrorist organization.